The present invention relates generally to harvesting agricultural crops and, more particularly, to providing real-time information relating to a farm operator""s skill and efficiency at producing crops.
Harvesters, such as grain combines and cotton pickers, are widely used in the agricultural industry to provide a mechanized and quick manner of harvesting crops from a tract of land. Such machines generally provide a quick and efficient means of separating and collecting the desirable attributes of the crop, such as the grain or the lint, and returning unusable plant residue to the land. Electronic monitors coupled to appropriate sensors are well known in the art for providing the grower with a reasonable means to measure the harvesting process and calculate a real-time yield relating to the quantity harvested on an area of land. Thus, a yield in bushels per acre or pounds of lint per acre can be calculated and displayed to the machine operator as a measure of the productivity of the land as the crop is being harvested. As farm land is commonly highly variable in productivity over the spatial distribution of the land, an indication of real-time yield would be valuable to the grower for determining cultural practices that maximize returns to management on any given tract of land.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,542,606 to Myers describes a method for storing and accessing organized data obtained by a yield monitor for agricultural harvesters. Data is collected, yields are calculated, and information relating to the grain harvested is sorted and stored. Yield monitors may be connected by various means with positioning devices to correlate yield to specific geographic areas.
However, up to now, no attempt has been made to quantify yield results in relation to the underlying soil productivity of the land from which the crop was harvested. One grower may be able to produce good yields from highly productive land, while another grower may be able to produce good yields from lesser productive land, but there is currently no universal comparison to gauge their respective skill and management ability.
The present invention is directed toward a method for providing an expression associating one variable, such as yield, with another variable, such as soil productivity. The relationship between yield and soil productivity is then used in determining and displaying a universal comparison of productivity (Yield Index). Soil productivity indexes are soil ratings established by the United States Natural Resources and Conservation Services for comparing specific soil types in a relational sense. Soil productivity indexes, once established, remain fixed. Through a universal index of yield, a grower""s performance and efficiency can be measured against a universal standard, just as financial institutions have techniques for the universal measurement of Return on Investment (ROI) or a baseball pitcher""s performance can be rated in terms of his Earned Run Average (ERA). Universal standards and benchmarks are critical to the evaluation of management and cultural practices.
It is a general object of the present invention to provide a new and improved method for establishing universal standards as a measure of a grower""s skill and management. Through the correlation of yield and soil productivity, real-time yield indices may be presented to the operators of harvesting equipment at a time when they are able to visually associate important information about the crop or the soil (weeds, insects, disease, drainage, fertility, etc.) that identify opportunities to improve management or cultural practices. As yield monitors only record information relating to the harvested material, much information relating to plant health and productivity is left in the field and is not recorded. By alerting the operator to significant changes in relationships in plant productivity, observations about a crop can be noted before important evidence is destroyed. The yield indices generated by this method can also be saved by various recording methods for further review and analysis at a later time.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a display, through graphical presentation of information, that is easier for the operator of harvesting equipment to interpret and understand.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent to persons skilled in the art from the following detailed disclosure of the exemplary embodiment accompanied by the attached drawing where identical reference numerals will refer to like parts in the various views.